Binance held an AMA with our very own Adriaan Brink on Thursday, 29 July 2021. There were some exciting updates revealed. Here are some highlights from the jam-packed AMA:
- Adriaan revealed that there will be a formal announcement about the Level 2 Token leveraging the Polygon (formerly known as Matic) network. “In the next 2 months, we will release a new Level 2 token on Polygon/Matic network to leverage their performance and low transaction fees,” he said.
- DPlay Casino was the first non-custodial FUN accepting casino, which is soon followed by another FUN accepting casino. “We will be launching another more fully-fledged casino shortly,” he explained.
- Deal signed with a crypto-travel agency so you can use your FUN to fly from Vegas to Monaco! “We’ve also just signed an agreement with a crypto-travel agency, so soon you can book your flights to Vegas, Macau, or Monaco with FUN. That formal announcement will come in August.” He was especially excited about this!
- Adriaan explained how the new L2 token will play in the burn program. “We will do this with a new token on the side chain 1:1 pegged and linked to FUN – in order to get the new token, you have to escrow your FUN (reducing the trading supply). This will have a way bigger impact on price than any token burning program!” More details on the way soon, he promised.
The full transcript of the AMA with 16,000+ online users asking over 300 questions is below (only the selected questions will be answered here now, more on the rest later):
TRANSCRIPT
Binance: Hi, chat and welcome to a special AMA with the FUNToken team! It is my pleasure to introduce to you Adriaan Brink, who is the project’s CEO!
Hi Adriaan, thank you for joining us today. Would you please introduce yourself to the chat and share a quick overview about FUNToken?
Adriaan: I’m Adriaan Brink, the CEO of FUNToken. I was previously the CEO of Better Betting Foundation, and earlier this year I was appointed as CEO at FUNToken when we merged. I started in igaming and payments in 1995 with lotteries and progressed through all gaming verticals (Casino, Bingo, Mahjong, and Sports Betting) over the past 25 years. The crypto landscape is very similar to those early iGaming years, and I am excited to be a part of it!
FUNToken originally launched in January 2018 as FUNFair. Earlier this year, new owners bought substantial tokens on-market and then acquired 3.75 BILLION FunFair founder tokens, rebranded it as FUN, and launched the FUNToken. Since then, we’ve been on track delivering on our roadmap to deliver advanced gaming opportunities with a clear direction for FUNToken’s utility, relevant software development, and technical infrastructure.
Binance: Thank you, Adriaan for that quick introduction!
Chat, if you’d like to learn more about FUNToken, do check out these links below. Follow the team on Twitter and join in on conversations about FUNToken via their Telegram channel.
Let’s jump right into the first segment of today’s AMA session. Here’s our first question for you.
Q1: Tell us about you and how you got involved in the project.
Adriaan: As mentioned earlier, I started in iGaming in 1995 with the Liechtenstein lottery, which was the very first online gaming site in the world. We ran that for ten years. It had its challenges for sure in those early days, but that’s how I got into the industry, which of course, grew to be the massive industry that it is today.
Subsequently, I have been involved in casinos and sports betting, and many different verticals in gaming. The last being Better Betting, which is a crypto-based peer-to-peer betting system, which we ICO’d in 2017. Jez San, the former CEO of FUNFair, is a good friend of mine, and he was one of our advisors and was an advisor and investor in BETR – Better Betting. With the merger/acquisition of FUN and BETR, I was happy to take over as CEO of FUNToken Ltd.
Binance: Thank you for sharing the history of FUNToken, and on to our next question.
Q2. What do you see as the goal for FUNTOken?
Adriaan: Over the years, we’ve been working towards building true utility in the space of blockchain gambling and think we have the right vehicle now with FUN. As with all projects – we have to take things one step at a time. Both FUN and BETR suffered tremendously with the rising price and latency of Ethereum transactions, so our first major tech release will be to deal with this issue.
In the next 2 months, we will release a new Level 2 token on Polygon/Matic network to leverage their performance and low transaction fees. A full announcement on this will be made next week, but the most important takeaway is that it will be seamlessly integrated with FUN and will draw liquidity out of the trading market into the gaming utility market that we are driving forwards with. Combining this with the huge 46M player base that our partners in Freebitcoin have will solidify our position as the number 1 gaming token and substantially increase the FUN user base.
Binance: Thanks for sharing! I bet we have lots of audience members watching and supporting FUNToken every step!
Q3. Where can FUNToken be used?
Adriaan: You can currently use FUN on the recently launched dplay.casino. This is an introduction to the future – we will be launching another more fully-fledged casino shortly, and dplay.casino will remain as a testbed and workhorse for developing our decentralised technology.
You can also use FUN on Freebitco.in. They have 46+ million users and have had a significant uptake in their FUN Premium Membership (where their members buy FUN off-chain as a premium token). In the space of a few months, they have sold FUN to 167K members (which is double the existing on-chain number of holders). These members will be brought on-chain with the launch of the L2 token.
Because travel is also fun, and arguably a gamble in these Covid days–haha–we’ve also just signed an agreement with a crypto-travel agency, so soon you can book your flights to Vegas, Macau or Monaco with FUN. That formal announcement will come in August.
We are also in talks with major gaming platforms to utilize FUN as their gaming token. We recently ran a Million FUN Poker tournament with 40,000 players from around the world participating. We will be publishing open APIs for any gaming sites that wish to join our ecosystem once the L2 token is launched.
And of course you can SAVE your FUNTokens here on Binance and get a 45% APY return.
Binance: That’s awesome! Moving on to question 4.
Q4. How is FUNToken solving problems in the gaming space?
Adriaan: We’re bringing transparency to the gaming industry using blockchain technology
I am not saying that the gaming industry as it exists today is not honest or fair or anything like that. The reality is that there are hiccups and there is exposure to the operators. Trust is everything in igaming, FUN helps ensure that confidence in the operators who use it.
Operator escrow is a fundamental part of the gaming proposition. A player places a bet (spins a slot or bets on a sporting outcome) and their bet is taken into escrow pending the outcome of the game. Simultaneous to this the operator needs to ensure that sufficient funds are available to settle any winnings on this bet. By moving this process entirely onto blockchain we remove the custodial elements of the bet (where the operator is holding your funds off-chain) and replace them with an on-chain, unalterable transaction. This was a core goal of both Funfair and BETR and we both achieved it to some extent, but the cost and latency on Ethereum worked strongly against large scale success.
Hence the move for all gaming activity to a sidechain. By leveraging Ethereum technology off main-net we are able to use the solid and proven technology base without its drawbacks in terms of transaction fees and latency. We will do this with a new token on the side chain 1:1 pegged and linked to FUN – in order to get the new token you have to escrow your FUN (reducing the trading supply). This will have a way bigger impact on price than any token burning program!
Having said that, we are also committed to burning 50% of the net profit from all gaming operations that we control – this will start at the end of Q3 and be a quarterly event after that.
Binance: On to the last question for this segment!
Q5. What else does FUNToken have in store?
Adriaan: We’ve announced our roadmap and we have so far been achieving our milestones. https://staging.funtoken.io/funtoken-roadmap/.
We are looking at further opportunities for the token within the gambling space, looking at how this measure of value that now has a user base and has the tradability and the exchangeability can be used in other verticals or in similar verticals.
We will leverage the huge Freebitcoin player base to ramp up the FUN user base and increase utility – the more that we can get more players to demand more FUN the better it is for the tokenomics – reducing trading supply and ultimately breaking us free of the current trading which is largely linked to BTC and ETH pricing.
We will continue to run competitions and promotions for the token. We did a trading comp on Binance 3 months ago with $250K prizes and are following up with one that started this morning ($100K prizes). We underwrote a poker freeroll with a partner that had 40K users. We will continue to actively market and promote the token.
And finally, once the new L2 token is bedded down, we will be expanding the opportunities to use it with B2B deals with 3rd party operators in the space – again increasing utility and decreasing trading supply.
Binance: Thank you for sharing your thoughts and answers with all of us. Once again chat, here below links to all things FUNToken! Adriaan, are you ready?
Adriaan: Yes! Let’s start!
Binance: Great, so what is the first quiz question! The first question is:
Q1: Question: What was FUNToken previously known as?
A. Fun world
B. Funtimes
C. Casino token
D. FunFair
And… time’s up!
Binance, please share with us the answer for question 1!
Adriaan: The answer is D, FunFair!
Q2. Question : What is the recently launched FUN casino called?
A. Digital Casino
B. FUN play
C. FUN Casino
D. DPLAY Casino
Adriaan: The answer is D DPLAY Casino
Q3: How many FUNTokens did we giveaway in our recent Poker Freeroll Tournament
A. 100,000
B. 250,000
C. 1,000,000
D. 100,000
Adriaan: The answer is C . 1,000,000 FUNTokens
Q4: What is the max APY you can earn by saving FUN on Binance?
A: 45% APY
B. 10% APY
C. 15% APY
D. 50% APY
Adriaan: 45% APY. Find out more here:
https://binance.com/en/support/announcement/44d8084fb1c14c8bbd62cedd99b0954b
Q5: In February what number of tokens did our partner Freebitco.in acquire to use on their platform.
A. 2.75 billion
B. 3.75 billion
C. 37.5 million
D. 27.5 million
Adriaan: The answer is B 3.75 billion
Segment 3
Binance: As we move on to Segment 3, here’s a quick reminder.
In order to be eligible for any prizes for Segment 3, you need to have joined FUNToken’s Telegram Group!
The 10 best-asked questions from the chat will win $FUN tokens!
Chat, are you ready?
Community Member: Without having any working marketing and capital infusion: the project dies… Can you assure us users that you have adequate marketing power and capital to push this project to the top project?
Adriaan: Excellent and important question. We are extremely well funded by existing profitable operations and have no requirement to raise further capital. Remember – the principals bought their tokens – they didnt get any for free in an ICO or something. We are in for the long game
Community Member: What are your top 3 priorities for 2021? Can you share some of your plans for the coming year as well as your token development plan and strong community so that people can have a good look at your project?
Adriaan: It’s a bit tricky this format Q&A since this question was asked by a few people. My top 1 priority is to drive the usage of the new L2 token through the roof. This will drain the trading liquidity and determine the price going forwards.
That’s simple answer that of course covers a much more complex and detailed roadmap – but its about providing engaging and entertaining opportunities for our player base so they WANT to hold and use the tokens then marketing to bring the players into the ecosystem
Having access to the traffic and player base from freebitco.in is a tremendous leverage for us – 46M players and eye-watering traffic on the website (makes this channel seem quiet!)
ROUND 2:
Community Member: Deploying $FUN L2 token on #Polygon it’s a pretty great idea for long term sustainability of the project considering its transaction fee flexibility.. Could you please, share when this will take effect?
Adriaan: We will launch the new L2 token within the next 60 days. It is currently in testing and we are building the utilities around it to make it really easy to use.
The goal is to bring crypto to the masses – this cannot happen until we make it really super simple to use the token
Community Member: Sure, the major drawbacks of blockchain betting or casinos face is low transaction processing speed, incase you have transaction with Bitcoin you may wait litlle bit longer so, how can FunToken deal with this and what are your plan on it?
Adriaan: This is why we are launching the L2 token on Polygon. It is one of the cheapest blockchains out there with massive scalability. We will also be looking at techniques to provide zero-cost (gas free) transactions to users – gas is one of the biggest hinderances to adoption of crypto by the mainstream public.
Community Member: Almost 80% investors have just focused on price of token in short term instead of understanding the real value of the project. Can you tell us on motivations and benefits for investors to hold your token in long term?
Adriaan: It is simple token economics. The new L2 token will remove tokens from the circulating trading supply proportionate to demand. In other words, the more people want to use it for gambling and the more funds that are being used in the ecosystem the less that will be available for trading and more the price will appreciate. Now look at the size of the online gambling market and its not hard to see that even with a small percentage of that we get to rather large numbers. Chuck in an existing player base of 46M people and this gets very real!
Community Member: What is the most lethal feature and competitive advantage that distinguishes the FUN Token project from other projects? Does your project support the staking program? If yes, could you explain the reason?
Adriaan: Interesting question – and I hope I interpret it correctly. We will be introducing Lay Staking as part of the casino rollout later this year which will make it possible for players to effectively “become the house” and participate in the returns from the activity. A bit like peer-to-peer betting, but for casino games. This will result in an increased lay pool and increased liquidity in the system (also further draining supply from the circulating trading supply)
Community Member: I believe that “With Right Token Everything is Possible”. What are all Key Features and Killing Benefits make $FUN Token Right Token according to Investors ? And What is your strongest advantage that you think will make your team leading the market?
Adriaan: The new L2 token will incorporate the work done by both Funfair and BETR in terms of moving the financial transactions on-chain. Ultimately there should be no need for any custodial funds to be held – all funds will be transacted on-chain in a provably fair and transparent manner. What this means in practice is: when you place a bet you dont pay someone to hold onto your money and then pay you back if you win, rather your funds are escrowed from your account (frozen if you like) and the counterparty risk is escrowed from the lay side. Then when the bet is resulted the winner gets the funds. It is possible to move this entire process on-chain which eliminates financial risk to the punter.
ROUND 3:
Community Member: Are you till mining FUNTokens?
Adriaan: We are not minting any tokens. Any tokens in the team were bought on market from the existing supply and are not subject to holds. There are about 10Bn FUN and no way to increase this number. Our market cap is currently around $170M. This is a tiny number in comparison to the amount of money circulating right now in online casinos and sportsbooks. By bringing the token to the mainstream market with an easy to use UX, easy accessibility and integration with large and diverse gambling opportunities the $ amount that is drained from the circulating supply will very quickly translate into an increase in price.
Community Member: What are the key milestones on your roadmap – both things you have already achieved and things that we can look forward to? Any partnerships and short/long term technical milestones that you want to talk about or bring some attention to?
Adriaan: We have a ton of things going on – not all of them on our published roadmap. By far the most important is the L2 token launch. I will be releasing an official statement about this next week, it is a cornerstone event for us and will drive forward much of the activity for the coming year. We are also in active discussions with content providers (eg poker) so will be adding 3rd party content to the ecosystem as well. And – did I mention that we will start pouring that 46M player base into the ecosystem as well?
Community Member: How do you see the gambling & gaming landscape is changing in the next 5 or 10 years? Could blockchain crypto casinos ever replace online and traditional one?
Adriaan: I have been in the online gambling space since the very beginning. I watched it grow and have been deeply involved from a technical perspective and as an operator. I see crypto in general very much like the internet was in 1995 – a bit geeky with a relatively small number of participants – and look how the internet has grown to be a massive part of life. In the same way crypto will become a part of life for the average person – it may take a few more years but it will happen. And naturally activities that involve money will move into crypto (gambling being very high on that list).
Adriaan: Sorry about the typos!!!! Thank you – i have thoroughly enjoyed it!
Binance: It has been great to have you, Adriaan, with us today to talk more about FUNToken’s business.
Binance: Thank you, chat, for your time! For those of you who had your questions selected in Segment 3, please make sure your username is not private. Please PM me and share your information in order to claim your prize.
Last but not least, thank you to the wonderful team at FUNToken!